We are pleased to announce the sixth joint Graduate Student Conference for Italian Studies, to be held on Friday, March 8th and Saturday, March 9th, 2013 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The conference is aimed at exploring the role of materiality in Italian culture. We welcome submissions from any related fields of research (Literary Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Comparative Literature, Fine Arts, Gender Studies, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Theater & Performance Studies, etc.), in order to establish an interdisciplinary dialogue among the panelists. Our approach to the Cultural Materials / Material Culture chiasmus will particularly highlight three major subsets for investigation: the presence of objects & their semiotic role within cultural systems of signs; the role of materiality in the production of cultural items and its influence on their creation; the commodification and objectification of culture. With our focus on materiality, we also hope to elicit papers that make use of diversified presentational resources (digital, multimedial, visual, etc.), in order to create a more culturally relevant, interactive, & thought-provoking space for sharing and learning.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
Objects in literature and the arts
Corpus, corporeal, ethereal
Manuscripts, print and the new media
Materials and materiality in the arts
Cultural property
Paraliterature and letteratura di consumo
Urban environments and architecture
Photography and film
Digital vs. analogical
Commodification of literature
Consumerism
Pedagogy: teaching with things
Fashion
The body as object

Since we are accepting abstracts from across disciplines, we would be most grateful if you could help us by extending the invitation and forwarding this Call for Papers Extension to your own students and other relevant departments and institutions of your University.